2012: Waiting for an ex nihilo event

Meillassoux removes all necessity from the laws of nature and in this process he also removes probabilities and creates a different understanding of the world. His hyper-Chaos/super-Chaos is a time consisting of discontinuous instants which could, without any reason whatsoever, change and reorder causes and effects of the universe ex nihilo. Usually ex nihilo emergence demands a transcendence that exceeds the rational comprehension of processes. It moves by sudden jumps that appear to be governed by a transcendent God (like the Callemanian quantum waves). However, what Meillassoux does is to inject sudden leaps into the immanent rational world. To him, a miracle is rather the manifestation of the inexistence of God since any rupture shows that there is no overseeing order that controls becoming (by referring to Cantor’s mathematics). Time brings forth a virtuality which did not preexist.

Just because something can occur it need not occur. If one argues that one subordinate the contingency of becoming to the necessity of a law that says all possibilities must be actualized. Hence, in a world where everything is capable it must also be capable of not accomplishing things. Meillassoux sees the progression from matter to life as a series of sudden leaps that were not contained in what came before. This means that there is no historical depth of what exists and of the composition of things themselves. Hence, Meillassoux’s explanation (or non-explanation) of how life emerged is not supported by science and it appears to be similar to creationism according to his critiques. Meillassoux, on the other hand, argues that suspicion against the idea of origin is linked to the religious idea of creation. Novelty can never be true novelty if it can be explained by what preceded it. Hence, McKenna’s Timewave is not true novelty since it is believed to be calculable.

Meillassoux divides the World into stages of Advent. There are four Advents of orders that rupture becoming and those are matter, life, thought and justice. The fourth has not yet emerged and it may never emerge.

I will publish the final post on Meillassoux after the winter solstice has occurred (11:12 GMT, December 21). If I manage to post it, the fourth order (justice) has not emerged yet and I will speculate on another date for that emergence (even though one cannot know in advance of something that emerges ex nihilo). It will just be food for thought.

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[…] Most of the apocalyptic/transformation of consciousness ideas have been based on religious and esoteric metaphysics. Since nothing actually happened (or will happen), you may start to reconsider that this kind of metaphysics is not what is at stake after all. Some 2012-prophets, who strongly believe in this kind of metaphysics, condemn “materialism”, or rather “scientific materialism”. However, maybe the “speculative materialism” that I have outlined in the past posts is something you should take a look at. The previous posts can be found here, here, and here. […]